Do you know what's the main goal of any gas station owner? To get lots of trucking accounts. Business from small car drivers is worth pennies, and it gets on my nerves to hear them ask again and again, 'Five dollars of regular, please.' Trucks are different. They usually pump in a couple of hundreds of gallons at a time. For instance, here comes a flashy 18-wheeler with a sign 'Software Delivered.' These guys ship reusable open source components around the globe. As a former programmer, I was trying to play it smart by asking why they don't just let people download these components from the Internet? But the smiley truckers (many of whom used to be software developers too) just shrug and tell me that nothing beats personal delivery, plus the tips.

In the unlikely event that you're not familiar with my gas station, you can find my previous essays at http://jdj.sys-con.com/read/category/1142.htm. Recently, I've conducted a small survey among my truck drivers. I asked them just one question: 'What do you think of application servers?' The most popular answer was, 'I don't need no stinkin' application server.' And truck drivers usually know what they're talking about!

Yesterday, we celebrated the birthday of my employee Alex in a fancy Russian restaurant. If you haven't tried it, go there - once. The party started late, and I've never seen such a variety of food on the table at the same time (they call this setup 'bratskaya mogila,' which means 'mass grave'). After five shots of straight vodka, we enjoyed a Broadway-type show, and then more drinks and food. Anyway, this morning the last thing I wanted to do was drive to my gas station.

In the first two articles of this series (see http://java.sys-con.com/read/108260.htm and http://java.sys-con.com/read/124664.htm), I started thinking aloud about automating my gas station using various Java-related technologies. This time, I'm trying to figure out what IDE and Web framework to use.

In the first article of this series (see http://java.sys-con.com/read/108260.htm), I 'bought' a gas station with a convenience store and a repair shop and started to think about automating this small business using various Java technologies. This time, I'm getting a crash course on open source software.

Several years ago I was thinking about buying a small gas station in my local town. I went to my friend Gregory Z., a successful businessman in this field, and asked him, 'How do I start a gasoline business?' He gave me simple but wise advice: 'You know nothing about gas, but know a lot about computers. Keep doing what you're doing. Just be a little better than others'.